From the London _Lancet_ we learn that "many years ago a case was
recorded by Doctor Otto, of Copenhagen, in which 495 needles passed
through the skin of a hysterical girl, who had probably swallowed them
during a hysterical paroxysm, but these all emerged from the regions
below the diaphragm, and were collected in groups, which gave rise
to inflammatory swellings of some size. One of these contained 100
needles. Quite recently Doctor Bigger described before the Society of
Surgery of Dublin a case in which more than 300 needles were removed
from the body of a woman. It is very remarkable in how few cases the
needles were the cause of death, and how slight an interference with
function their presence and movement cause."
It would seem, from the cases on record, that needles in the system
rather assist in the digestion and promote longevity.
For instance, we will suppose that the hysterical girl above alluded
to, with 495 needles in her stomach, should absorb the midsummer
cucumber. Think how interesting those needles would make it for the
great colic promoter!
We can imagine the cheerful smile of the cucumber as it enters the
stomach, and, bowing cheerfully to the follicles standing around, hangs
its hat upon the walls of the stomach, stands its umbrella in a corner,
and proceeds to get in its work.
All at once the cucumber looks surprised and grieved about something.
It stops in its heaven-born colic generation, and pulls a rusty needle
out of its person. Maddened by the pain, it once more attacks the
digestive apparatus, and once more accumulates a choice job lot of
needles.
Again and again it enters into the unequal contest, each time losing
ground and gaining ground, till the poor cucumber, with assorted
hardware sticking out in all directions, like the hair on a cat's tail,
at last curls up like a caterpillar and yields up the victory.
Still, this needle business will be expensive to husbands, if wives
once acquire the habit and allow it to obtain the mastery over them.
If a wife once permits this demon appetite for cambric needles to get
control of the house, it will soon secure a majority in the senate, and
then there will be trouble.
The woman who once begins to tamper with cambric needles is not safe.
She may think that she has power to control her appetite, but it is
only a step to the maddening thirst for the darning-needle, and perhaps
to the button-hook and carpet-stretcher.
It is safer and better to crush the first desire for needles than to
undertake when it is too late reformation from the abject slavery to
this hellish thirst.
We once knew a sweet young creature, with dewy eye and breath like
timothy hay. Her merry laugh rippled out upon the summer air like the
joyful music of baldheaded bobolinks.
Everybody loved her, and she loved everybody too. But in a thoughtless
moment she swallowed a cambric needle. This did not satisfy her. The
cruel thraldom had begun. Whenever she felt depressed and gloomy, there
was nothing that would kill her ennui and melancholy but the fatal
needle-cushion.
From this she rapidly became more reckless, till there was hardly an
hour that she was not under the influence of needles.
If she couldn't get needles to assuage her mad thirst, she would take
hairpins or door-keys. She gradually pined away to a mere skeleton. She
could no longer sit on one foot and be happy.
Life for her was filled with opaque gloom and sadness. At last she took
an overdose of sheep-shears and monkey-wrenches one day, and on the
following morning her soul had lit out for the land of eternal summer.
We should learn from this to shun the maddening needle-cushion as we
would a viper, and never tell a lie.